If anyone is interested in becoming a regular or occasional SRE Volunteer at Arthur Philip High School or Parramatta High School, please let me know. There are 3 classes happening across the 2 schools and hopefully more by the end of the year, and thus there are needs for some brave and courageous people to give up 1-2 hours a week to go in and assist St. John’s Anglican Church Parramatta in running the classes.
From Henry:
The Music Team is coming together for its Annual Music Team Open Night on Tuesday 2 February 2021, 7:30pm at 5 Gore Street Parramatta (COVID restrictions permitting)
It's such an important night to open our year, as we are encouraged in the biblical purposes of singing, as we hear the vision for the music team, as we go through the responsibilities of being on team, and as we invite people to recommit to serve again in 2021.
And being an open night, it is open to anyone. If you are not on the music team but are interested in exploring the possibility of serving in this way, this night is for you too!
Hope to see you there! What a privilege it is to serve Jesus alongside you all!
Henry
Church, I have great news! We’re able to stay at Tara going forward. There may be some changes necessary for increased precaution and protection for the school community but nonetheless, we are staying, at least for now!
Thank you for your prayers and the resilience to change!
See you on Sunday for International Sunday!
P.S. I will be contacting some of you later this week to see if you could pray/read in another language!
In the evening, we will have our Church Family Meeting, which we call “Envision”. To give us updates on how things have been going (ministries and finances) and to give you a vision for what our year is going to look like!
Due to COVID, we don’t yet know where or what time. Stay tuned but please put it in your calendars :)
Time: TBD
Where: TBD
From Henry:
The Music Team is coming together for its Annual Music Team Open Night on Tuesday 2 February 2021, 7:30pm at 5 Gore Street Parramatta (COVID restrictions permitting)
It's such an important night to open our year, as we are encouraged in the biblical purposes of singing, as we hear the vision for the music team, as we go through the responsibilities of being on team, and as we invite people to recommit to serve again in 2021.
And being an open night, it is open to anyone. If you are not on the music team but are interested in exploring the possibility of serving in this way, this night is for you too!
Hope to see you there! What a privilege it is to serve Jesus alongside you all!
Henry
Our Term 1 Starting Point course is coming up, please register to let us know you are coming so that we can have the materials ready for you.
Starting Point is our pre-membership course the enables you to study our doctrine, practices, and distinctives so that you can prayerfully determine whether God is leading you to join us.
It will be a 7 week course on Sunday’s before church,
Starting Date: Sunday 7th Feb
Time: 8:45am (don’t worry coffee + donuts will be provided!)
Commitment: It is a 7 week course that works best if you attend each week. We will end our time together with a dinner, if possible. After that, there is no pressure to join our church
This week we are heading back to Philip Ruddock Water Park for lunch after church!
There is a café and store down the road or bring your own food, + bring swimmers for the kids, see you there!
On Sunday, Riley unpacked Psalm 119:1-8 for us.
He explained that true blessing is found in knowing and obeying the word of God.
“Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!” - Psalm 119:1-3
We also began our Adult Memory Verse Project with Psalm 1:1-2, by the end of January the aim is as a church to memorise all of Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
The Core Team (Burnetts, Magnos, Songs, Springs, Abi Chavez) are taking all of Thursday - Saturday to pray, plan, review, and think through our church. Please be praying for this significant time. We do not want to do anything in our own flesh but rather want the Spirit to lead us!
During notices on Sunday I revealed some very exciting news about our church going forward in 2021! We will be taking some steps forward in a few ways:
Richard Song will be begin a ‘Pastoral Internship’ to discover whether God has called him to the task of being a Pastor. This means Richard will work for the church one day a week so that he has some dedicated time to study, practice ministry, and work with me.
I will be working for ‘Sovereign Grace Churches Australia’ for a couple of hours a week with the goal of trying to further establish our denomination here in Aus. Our hope is to spread the message far and wide that: “We are a highly relational denomination with a passion to see planters trained, pastors cared for, and enduring churches built all across Australasia” . If you know of anyone who is interested in becoming a pastor, planting a church, or being adopted into a denomination, please send them my way!
To make up for the time that I will spend doing that, I have hired Abigail Chavez as our new “Admin Assistant”. She will give about four hours a week to helping make our church function even more effectively. Her role is primarily to assist me in getting everything done for the church and to free me up to ensure I can focus on the tasks that are most essential for pastoral ministry.
Sadly, Rach Pettett is no longer continuing on doing our Bookkeeping. She has done an incredible job for both our church and Wahroonga and will be sorely missed. To fill her big shoes we have hired Jordan Pangan to be our Bookkeeper.
Finally, Sovereign Grace Parramatta is now legally separated from SG Wahroonga. This was always the plan, as theologically we believe that churches are to be independent whilst also being interdependent. This means that we now have all our own legals, accounting, finances, and our own director board. Nothing will really change on the ground level though, its more a formality!
Big changes! So please be praying for these new developments! As exciting as all this is let’s not get lost in the reality that there are hundreds of thousands of people who live in Parramatta City Area who do not know Jesus, we have SO much work to do, and so we ALL need to move forward on our knees in prayer and get moving on our toes in action!